Mazen O. Hasna

End-to-end performance of transmission systems with relays over Rayleigh-fading channels

End-to-end performance of two-hop wireless communication systems with nonregenerative relays over flat Rayleigh-fading channels is presented. This is accomplished by deriving and applying some new closed-form expressions for the statistics of the harmonic mean of two independent exponential variates. It is shown that the presented results can either be exact or tight lower bounds on the performance of these systems depending on the choice of the relay gain. More specifically, average bit-error rate expressions for binary differential phase-shift keying, as well as outage probability formulas for noise limited systems are derived. Finally, comparisons between regenerative and nonregenerative systems are presented. Numerical results show that the former systems clearly outperform the latter ones for low average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). They also show that the two systems have similar performance at high average SNR.

Optimal power allocation for relayed transmissions over Rayleigh-fading channels

Relayed transmission is a way to attain broader coverage by splitting the communication link from the source to the destination into several shorter links/hops. One of the main advantages of this communication technique is that it distributes the use of power throughout the hops. This implies longer battery life and lower interference introduced to the rest of the network. In this context, this paper investigates the optimal allocation of power over these links/hops for a given power budget. All hops are assumed to be subject to independent Rayleigh fading. Outage probability which is the probability that the link quality from source to destination falls below a certain threshold is used as the optimization criterion. Numerical results show that optimizing the allocation of power enhances the system performance, especially if the links are highly unbalanced in terms of their average fading power or if the number of hops is large. Interestingly, they also show that nonregenerative systems with optimum power allocation can outperform regenerative systems with no power optimization.

Harmonic mean and end-to-end performance of transmission systems with relays

Closed-form expressions for the statistics of the harmonic mean of two independent and identically distributed gamma variates are presented. The probability density function of the harmonic mean of two F variates is also derived. These statistical results are then applied to study the performance of wireless communication systems with nonregenerative relays over flat Nakagami fading channels. More specifically, outage probability formulas for noise-limited systems as well as systems affected by interference are obtained. Furthermore, general expressions for average bit-error rates are also derived. Finally, comparisons between regenerative and nonregenerative systems are presented. Numerical results show that the former systems clearly outperform the latter ones for low average signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). They also show that the two systems have similar performance at high average SNRs.

Outage probability of multihop transmission over Nakagami fading channels

We present a general analytical framework for the evaluation of the end-to-end outage probability of multihop wireless communication systems with nonregenerative relays over Nakagami fading channels. It is shown that the presented results can either be exact or tight lower bounds on the performance of these systems depending on the choice of the relay gain. More specifically, we obtain a closed-form expression for the moment generating function of the reciprocal of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and we then use this expression to calculate the outage probability via numerical inversion of the Laplace transform. Numerical examples show that regeneration is more crucial at low average SNR and for multihop systems with a large number of hops.

Optimal power allocation for relayed transmissions over Rayleigh fading channels

Relayed transmission is a way to attain broader coverage by splitting the communication link from the source to the destination into several links/hops. One of the main advantages of this communication technique is that it distributes the use of power throughout the hops which means longer battery lives and lower interference introduced to the rest of the network. In this context, this paper investigates the optimal allocation of power over these links/hops for a given power budget. All hops are assumed to be subject to independent Rayleigh fading. The optimization criterion used is outage probability which is the probability that the link quality from source to destination falls below a certain threshold. Numerical results show that optimizing the allocation of power enhances the system performance, specially if the links are highly unbalanced in terms of their average fading power. They also show that non-regenerative systems with optimum power allocation can outperform regenerative systems with no power optimization.

Performance analysis of two-hop relayed transmissions over Rayleigh fading channels

Closed form expressions for the statistics of the harmonic mean of two independent exponential variates are presented. These statistical results are then applied to study the performance of wireless communication systems with non-regenerative relays over flat Rayleigh fading channels. It is shown that these results can either be exact or tight lower bounds on the performance of these systems depending on the choice of the relay gain. More specifically, outage probability formulas for noise limited systems are obtained. Furthermore, outage capacity and bit error rate (BER) expressions for binary differential phase shift keying are derived. Finally, comparisons between regenerative and non-regenerative systems are presented. Numerical results show that the former systems clearly outperform the latter ones for low average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). They also show that the two systems have similar performance at high average SNR.

A performance study of dual-hop transmissions with fixed gain relays

The paper presents a study on the end-to-end performance of dual-hop wireless communication systems equipped with non-regenerative fixed gain relays and operating over flat Rayleigh fading channels. More specifically, it first derives generic closed-form expressions for the outage probability and the average probability of error when the relays have arbitrary fixed gains. It then proposes a specific fixed gain relay that benefits from the knowledge of the first hops average fading power and compares its performance with previously proposed relay gains that, in contrast, require knowledge of the instantaneous channel state information of the first hop. Finally, the paper investigates the effect of the relay saturation on the performance of the systems under consideration. Numerical results show that non-regenerative systems with fixed gain relays have a comparable performance to non-regenerative systems with variable gain relays. These results also show that relay saturation of these systems results in a minimal loss in performance.

Performance analysis of cellular mobile systems with successive co-channel interference cancellation

This paper presents an analytical framework for the performance evaluation of cellular mobile radio systems equipped with smart antenna systems. In particular, the paper focuses on low-complexity systems which are able to successively suppress the strongest active interferers. The desired user fading statistics is assumed to be flat Rayleigh, Rician, or Nakagami, whereas the interfering signals are assumed to be independent and subject to slow flat Rayleigh fading. The paper starts by presenting generic closed-form expressions for the the carrier-to-interference ratio probability density function after interference cancellation. Based on that, exact closed-form expressions for the outage probability and average error rate formulas are derived. Finally, a comparison with a practical cancellation scheme and the impact of some practical considerations on the performance of successive interference cancellation are investigated. More specifically, the effect of traffic loading, the overall spectral efficiency gain, and the impact of time delay are studied.

Modeling Heterogeneous Cellular Networks Interference Using Poisson Cluster Processes

Future mobile networks are converging toward heterogeneous multitier networks, where macro-, pico-, and femtocells are randomly deployed based on user demand. A popular approach for analyzing heterogeneous networks (HetNets) is to use stochastic geometry and treat the location of BSs as points distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP). However, a PPP model does not provide an accurate model for the interference when nodes are clustered around highly populated areas. This motivates us to find better ways to characterize the aggregate interference when transmitting nodes are clustered following a Poisson cluster process (PCP) while taking into consideration the fact that BSs belonging to different tiers may differ in terms of transmit power, node densities, and link reliabilities. To this end, we consider K-tier HetNets and investigate the outage probability, the coverage probability, and the average achievable rate for such networks. We compare the performance of HetNets when nodes are clustered and otherwise. By comparing these two types of networks, we conclude that the fundamental difference between a PPP and a PCP is that, for a PPP, the number of simultaneously covered mobiles and the network capacity linearly increase with K. However, for a PCP, the improvements in the coverage and the capacity diminish as K grows larger, where the curves saturate at some point. Based on these observations, we determine the scenarios that jointly maximize the average achievable rate and minimize the outage probability.

Threshold-Based Relaying in Coded Cooperative Networks

In cooperative communications, error propagation at the relay nodes degrades the diversity order of the system. To combat that effect, we present a novel technique to control error propagation at the relays, which is implemented in the context of a distributed turbo code. In the presented technique, the relay calculates the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values for the bits sent from the source. These values are subjected to a threshold to distinguish the reliable bits from the unreliable bits. The relay then forwards the bits that are deemed reliable and discards the bits that are not, resulting in fewer errors propagating to the destination. The assumption here is that the destination does not know the location of the discarded bits. We develop upper bounds on the end-to-end bit error rate, enabling us to optimize the threshold in terms of the minimum end-to-end bit error rate. We compare our technique with existing techniques that have been proposed to control error propagation, including using only a cyclic redundancy code check at the relay, forwarding analog LLR values, and by employing no error control at the relay at all. We demonstrate, through several numerical examples, that the proposed scheme outperforms all existing schemes.